As each day closer to July 1 passes by it becomes clearer than ever before that the Federal Government is out of its depth with the GST and WET. With a mere three weeks before the implementation of the GST, the legislation behind the WET has yet to be written in final form, let alone be presented before Parliament. It is, however, scheduled to be presented by the end of June. But the wine industry, which is one of the Australian industries most adversely affected by the introduction of the GST, is still unable to inform its members of the final nature of the so-called Wine Equalisation Tax. Furthermore, although the wine industry has received verbal assurances from the ACCC that it will not be required to do so, it has not received anything on paper to the effect that the ACCC will not demand that the wineries expected to benefit from the WET rebate on cellar door sales to wholesale value of $300,000 will not be required to pass on the benefits of that rebate to consumers. Or, to put it more simply, that the ACCC will not insist that the wine companies receive no benefit at all from the rebate, and that their wines would be reduced in price in proportion to the rebate they received. This would represent an about-face on the intention of the legislation which, as I have said earlier, has yet to be presented. The Winemakers Federation of Australia is concerned over this matter, but stresses that although there exists a possibility that the ACCC might take this approach it is unlikely given the intent of the legislation and verbal assurances it has received from the ACCC. The cynical observer might want more than verbal assurances from the ACCC at this time. Not to mention some final written legislation for a controversial and damaging new tax which is due to be implemented in no less than 23 days from now.
